I never learned how to play this sucker. It's on my list of weird boardgames to learn right after mahjong. (More of a card/tile game to learn but.. whatever). Mahjong's pretty easy, I just need to learn the deal with those wind tiles and such.

I never learned how to play this sucker. It's on my list of weird boardgames to learn right after mahjong. (More of a card/tile game to learn but.. whatever). Mahjong's pretty easy, I just need to learn the deal with those wind tiles and such.

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...and to learn those 200 ways to make a hand, and to score point : "Hey ! I"ve made a 'Banana Split on top on Mt Fuji by Springtime', I'll score 5 points. -- No ! You've stolen a tile, and your sequences are overlapping, and it's raining, you just score 3..."

Shougi is Japanese chess. It's played similar to regular chess with 2 exceptions: you can 'promote' your pieces by flipping them over once they've crossed a certain point on the board, and if you capture an enemy piece, you can place it on the board as one of your own during your turn. Hence, there's quite a bit of strategy involved and the risk of sacrificing a piece to get a better position is higher.

Mahjong is akin to a card game played with tiles instead. You are trying to make either 3 consecutive numbers or 3 of the same tile of the same pattern set. The tiles are arranged so that you can only make 4 sets; the last one is 2 pieces only and you have to get 2 matching tiles in order to win.